


kiss me like they do on the emergency broadcast news

by postcardmystery



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 22:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1664909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about Geckos is, they die young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kiss me like they do on the emergency broadcast news

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for canonical violence and abuse.

i. _gods_

There is no scar on Richie’s neck.

Seth has looked, over and over, not even trying to hide it, because Richie will know. The thing about his brother is that he always knows. He understands implicitly why there is no mark; he’s seen the right movies. (On this point, he knows Richie disagrees. Seth’s taste in Draculas is just _humiliating_.) The thing about Richie is that there is never a scar-- never, and always. That’s his brother. Always and never. Not only this, but also that. A rubik cube human, locked down tight. The thing about Richie is that he solves problems, and has never been a problem to be solved.

But that’s not Seth’s problem, not really, not when you open all the doors and shine in the light. (He’s wondered, in the one or two idle moments he’s had since he saw fangs slip from his brother’s mouth, if they’re going to have to all their jobs in the dark from now on. Then he remembers: no more jobs. Then-- Yeah. It’s a cycle.) Seth’s problem is not that he wants scar tissue on his brother’s neck, thick and stark to match the lines on his shoulder. It’s not the blood on Richie’s dove grey Prada. It’s not that he doesn’t know what any of this means, none of it, could go screaming mouthfoaming crazy with it, and Christ fucking knows, he’s never liked a cage, and this is the worst cage he’s ever been in.

No, when it comes down to it, his problem is as familiar and simple as the liquor on his Daddy’s breath. The thing about his brother is that he’s brilliant, blinding, batshit insane, with everything to live for and something in him that makes him get back up, no matter what knocks him down. 

The thing about Geckos is, they die young. 

 

 

ii. _sacrifice_

Richie has always been better with a knife.

He knows why, even if his brother doesn’t. Seth will always be a gun man, eleven times out of ten, because it keeps his distance, keeps him safe. Richie is the little brother, eternal and unquestionable, but he’s bigger, packs a punch like a ten-ton truck, and he’d sooner pistol-whip a man with a gun than shoot him with it. Knives are better. They narrow the variables. Richie likes to make someone else’s world contract as he expands his own. That’s just how things are.

So, they threw knives to settle bets, to settle scores, to decide who got to eat that day, because it turns out two scrawny feral kids with a criminal for a daddy don’t tend to luck out as far as the foster system goes. Richie won for bets, shoved his scores down flat, but he didn’t save Seth so he could starve in some shitty suburb, before anyone saw their name in (metaphorical) lights. 

There’s so many reasons Richie prefers a knife-- and. There are things Seth doesn’t know. Obviously. Richie could probably give him an itemized list. But how (why) Richie loses their sacred equivalent of a coin toss? Never.

“ _Pistelero_ scum,” that ranger hisses in Richie’s ear, in a dream that he’s not quite sure is a dream, and although Richie doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s wrong, he has exactly enough brain to laugh right in his face.

The scum part, though? Eh. He’s been called worse. 

“Weak, man. You should hear what my brother calls me when I wake him up in the mornings,” he says, and there is still no blade in his hand, but, but, but, his boot is a different story.

 

 

iii. _cauterised_

Richie saves him because Richie has always saved him, because they’ve re-made themselves out of each other’s ruins more times than Seth would care to count. 

When Seth needs out of prison, he gets out, when Seth needs saving from their dad, Richie’s ribs turned purple and his mouth dripped red. When Seth needed to know how to punch a bully without breaking his thumb, when Seth needed antibiotics when they had no health insurance, when Seth needed a gun, a bomb, a wife run off-- yeah. You get the picture. (Although not quite how Richie gets the picture, but that’s what makes Richie, Richie.)

Seth has never believed in gods, and does not believe in miracles; heroes don’t exist and villains are just him and his brother, soon as they got a better class of clothes. But Seth believes in Richie like his mom believed in Jesus, like it was something designed to stick in your chest and leave you spread open, sore. In a sick, beautiful, everlasting way, looking at his brother always stings a little. And-- well. There’s almost nothing on this earth that Seth Gecko would not pawn or sell or leave behind, but that? That slick, hot, shining twist between his ribs when Richie smiles at him--

Seth has killed men just to make his brother smile. He couldn’t even find you _regret_ on a map.

 

 

iv. _adoration_

Here is a list of things Richie Gecko is good at.

Snarling so small you almost don’t notice the fury in his eyes until it’s too late. Cracking that vault. And that one. And that one. That one too, but it’ll take him longer than usual. Playing the odds until they dissolve in his hands like smashing a sandcastle. Hitting the target with his eyes closed. How to jack the plates in forty seconds flat. Game theory. Theory. Games. Winning, winning, winning, _place your bets_.

When fourteen year old Richie learnt about the Prisoner’s Dilemma, he didn’t understand it. That is, he didn’t understand why it was a dilemma. Of course you keep your mouth shut. Of course the other prisoner wouldn’t break. How could something be a dilemma, if it could only have one possible outcome. Eventually, he understands. But he doesn’t, not really, somewhere deep down. He’d sell his soul to the devil, but not if it meant Seth would fry. He doesn’t get it. He gave up trying, somewhere around twenty, and he’s never looked back.

His brother is his brother, and they are not mutually assured destruction, but the inverse. They survive, and survive, and survive. There’s blood on the soles of his shoes and gunky shit in his hair and he’ll burn the world, he will, for making the error of thinking it could put Seth in a cage that Richie didn’t get to share. They’re a whole, whatever the law thinks. An indivisible entity. An impossible coin, with only one side, that always lands on its edge.

Here is a list of things Richie Gecko loves.

His brother. 

Stop looking. That’s the end of the goddamn line.

 

 

v. _catastrophe_

“I will never go anywhere I can’t follow you,” says Richie, and the thing is, the thing is, the thing is--

Seth turns his neck to the side, and closes his eyes, and isn’t afraid, not even a little.

The thing about Geckos is, they die young.


End file.
